UPSC has issued the Civil Services and Indian Forest Services combined Notification on the 27 April 2016. Most of the candidates endlessly discuss about the Eligibility criteria, number of attempts, State Cadre preferences, Medium of Examination, Number of Posts in a particular Service and the like things.

In the whole process of examination, candidates need to start early in order to get advantage over the others because this is a pure competition based examination. No matter what you get but in order to succeed it should be greater from others. The Final Merit is showing the same thing.

Following are some of the things which require early start to remain in an advantageous position.

a. The candidates should fill up the form in order to get the center of examination of their choice. Because the center of examination are allotted to the candidates on the basis of their preferences and the vacant berths in the schools of a particular cities.

b. The candidates should scan their photographs and signatures in order to fill the form early. Some aspirants always go for the new photograph each time they fill up the form. It is not required if you have photographs in hand. Always go for the best option among the available ones and don’t wait for the best option because sometimes Best option is not their till eternity.

c. The candidates should read and understand the Civil Services Exam Notification in its entirety and the main stress should be on the number of seats given in the Notification. The Merit of the IAS Prelims Exam varies with the number of seats given in the Civil Services Notification. Higher the number of seats lowers the merit of IAS Prelims Exam.

d. The candidates should fill the form early in order to get rid of the last minute technical glitches often happens in the UPSC server.

e. Now the onus of the IAS Prelims is on the General Studies Paper only because the General Studies Second Paper (Aptitude) became qualifying only. So the candidates should always think in that fashion in order the timely complete the Syllabus of Civil Services.

f. Read the syllabus as many times as you can. See, the real success lies in the “Chintan and Manan” of the content not only reading and learning. Manan opens up windows of explorations to the candidates which helps them at each level of examination. But UPSC has mentioned the syllabus in a very short form and the candidates needs the explanation of terms of the syllabus.

g. The Previous year question papers guides the candidates in the best way. The real gravity and difficulty level is provided by the previous year questions papers.

h. Prepare a time table for each day from the date of Notification till the date of IAS Prelims Examination. It will save your immense time in the daily routine. Most of the candidates find it very time consuming to divide the day and balance between various sections of the IAS Exam Syllabus.

i. Revision is a must part of the Time table because the candidates face the real challenge in summing of all their preparation at the time of Examination. Without revision, IAS Preparation is half backed bread which is of no use. It is a game of one question. The marks of one question can make the difference in the IAS Prelims results. Moreover it is the revision which interrelate helps in interrelating the topics.

j. The candidates should also see and hear the IAS Toppers Interviews of Previous years so that they can get the real gravity of the Civil Services Exam.

k. After starting the IAS Exam Preparation the candidates should practice with the model question papers in order to check their real ground, where they stand and how they should proceed further. The model test papers provide the instant feedback of the Civil Services Preparation of the candidate. It serves as an eye opener because many of the IAS Exam aspirants became over confident while preparing for the IAS Exam and become incumbent. So Practice is very important for the IAS Exam Preparation be to IAS.

Good Study Mateial is the Spine of IAS Exam Preparation and nobody can contradict with this statement. So candidates are supposed to read and practice from Good and Standard Study Material dervied from Standard books and NCERT Books.

These above summarized points for the IAS Exam Preparation is not exhaustive but is inclusive in nature. Any candidate can prepare their own strategy and can succeed. Last but not the least, the IAS aspirants who do hard and smart work will definitely qualify for the exam no matter which strategy he takes for the preparation.